WARNING: Spoilers ahead for the WarhammerTV series Angels of Death. 

Angels of Death is the first series to finish airing on WarhammerTV, the first of many I hope. So let’s take a deep dive into it. 

After a brief gunfight showing Captain Orpheo getting wrecked by some genestealers we get into the series proper introducing Sergeant Kazarion, whom I would consider the protagonist for the series. He’s fresh back from a stint in the Deathwatch, and thus separated from his brothers, and struggling a bit with the Black Rage. Both of these give the character some great fallibility, even the Emperor’s Angels have their own internal struggles. Too often, usually in what you would call “bolterporn”, Space Marines are depicted as invincible with personalities that range from smiles to doesn’t smile. Whilst Kazarion is firmly in the ‘doesn’t smile’ of personalities the ever present threat of the Black Rage does give him a vulnerability throughout the series. It hits particularly hard in the flashback scene in which Kazarion is talking to Mephiston before he leaves for the Deathwatch, it’s not an oscar winning performance by any stretch but you definitely get the sense that Kazarion is torn between duty and brotherhood. It’s these scenes that are the bones to the meat of the action scenes, and Angels of Death is a meaty series indeed. But to really labour the analogy: the meat is a little stringy. Angels of Death is a drop dead gorgeous series that I will shortly be gushing over, but what lets it down is the sound. When a boltgun goes off you want to hear its flesh-wrecking power: it fires big mean shells for a big mean universe. A bolter should sound like it has some real gristle to it, but in Angels of Death they sound like a child’s toy cap gun. It’s not just the guns either, the marines are well animated and look like they have some real weight to them but they just don’t sound like they do. It’s all treble and no bass, the broth is meaty but there’s no meat in it. Nowhere is this more apparent than when a Dreadnought opens up with an Assault Cannon. The scene is played up, building to this crescendo of the entombed warrior unleashing hell with his multibarrel monster of a weapon into a horde of xenos scum. But when the Assault Cannon finally spins up our hopes quickly spin down. Like that overpriced t-bone you thought that you ordered an hour ago turned out to be nothing more than a lamb chop. It isn’t terrible but you expected more. 

However, if you can get past the sound effects issue then by the Emperor this is jaw droppingly good looking animation. I really dig the art style as well, the marines being the only pop of colour against the greyscale universe that they inhabit. Even the roiling madness that is the warp is only shown in black and white. The world of Warhammer 40,000 truly is a grim and dark place and Angels of Death shows that off beautifully. The only light in all that darkness and death are our Blood Angel heroes, having the only colour in the series be the blood red of their red instantly puts them at the center of every scene. For the most part they’re well animated, although some of the facial animations and lip syncing will have you wanting them to put their helmets back on, and as mentioned their actions have that transhuman weight to them. 

The story was fairly serviceable, a straightforward extraction mission with a requisite number of speed bumps along the way. There’s nothing I would consider a twist per se, more revelations. Perhaps I’ve been gaslit by too many Warhammer stories in which the big bad turns out to be Chaos, but even in the thick of this genestealer infestation I kept expecting the spikey bois to inexplicably turn up. But it is nice to see the xenos getting some attention, even if they’re mostly xenos-human hybrids. And even on the Imperial side, the non-Space Marine characters get a fair outing. Both the human crew of the Sword of Baal and the Mechnicus Adepta drive the story forwards in their own way; the latter more than the former. In fact, Magos Castia-Theta-9 (for that is her name) is a fascinating character. She’s not an enemy to the Blood Angels but she isn’t exactly an ally either, as she is clearly using our heroes for her own ends.  

If I had to choose, I think my favourite character would have to be Livia, the Shipmistress of the Sword of Baal. She is an unmoving rock around which the turmoil of the series flows, she keeps a level head even as her ship is being overrun from the inside by Genestealer hybrids and while enemy ships attempt to blast them from the void. All of this, I might add, while the Sword of Baal has been rendered immobile as it is unable to cast off from a refueling station. Beset quite literally from all sides, Livia maintains that air of command whilst holding out for the Blood Angels planetside to make contact. In many ways, she reminds of Lotara Sarrin from the Horus Heresy books. 

Then again, there is the Hadrael the Techmarine. Who, for someone dedicated to the Omnissiah, is remarkably jovial. His joviality remains throughout the series, even while he’s purging the unclean around the docking clamps he’s still giving Livia sass over the vox. 

Overall, I enjoyed Angels of Death. It’s not the most groundbreaking series ever committed to streaming and it’s certainly not without its issues, but it has a certain charm to it. I enjoyed the characters and I enjoyed the animation. I’m keen to see what the next series is, it looks like they might finish off the rest of the Hammer and Bolter anthology series next but they have been using it as a bit of a filler and releases have been a bit sporadic. 

I give it three bolter shells out of five.